Amen

My daughter Mandy started having some problems with depression occasionally when she hit her teenage years.

We spent a lot of time talking, trying to figure out what the underlying cause was for her unbearable sadness. Is it school? Your boyfriend? Your stepfather? Me?

It was everything and nothing at the same time. There was no real reason. (And don't worry - we have gotten her help for this).

She just couldn’t stop crying sometimes, and she couldn’t help feeling like everything was a waste, like there was no point to anything. What’s the point of going to school? What difference does it make? All the things she used to dream about doing weren’t important to her anymore, at least not while she was feeling blue. Studying wildlife, going to college, traveling… who cares? Nothing matters. “There’s just no point,” she would say.

She would come out of it after a day or two, but when she was low, she was really low. And nothing mattered.

One day she was in her room in one of these moods, and she was flipping channels on her television. She happened to catch a show just as it was going to commercial break.

“When we return,” the announcer was saying in his smooth, baritone voice, “we’ll find out why everything is meaningless.”

Whoa.

Now this sounded like something worth waiting for. So she sat through all the commercials, waiting to find an explanation for everything she’d been feeling, the answer to all her questions, her new mantra. Surely someone understood how she felt.

It turned out to be a religious program. When they came back from the commercial break, the preacher resumed his sermon. “My brothers and sisters,” he began, “everything is absolutely meaningless.”

She leaned forward and put down her Mountain Dew. Speak to me father.

“Going to work everyday? Meaningless!”

“Amen!” she replied.

“Going to school everyday? Meaningless!”

“AMEN!”

“Nothing that you do in your life matters.”

“AAAAAAAMEN!”

She had finally found it. This was the justification she’d been looking for. All she really wanted to do was stay home and play Guild Wars and World of Warcraft and Zelda. And hang out with her boyfriend. And go to the mall. That was it. Well, the pizza place too.

It was like that music video where the little girl in the bee costume finally opens the gates to the place where all the other bee people are, and they welcome her with open arms and they dance to the music of Blind Melon.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” She was on her feet now.

“The only things that matter are the things you do for God, and your personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Oh.

She sat back down and resumed channel surfing. They almost had a convert.